I did in Florida before I sold them to get ahead of the market finally giving out.
As far as putting money into a rental, figure out what the mean rent is in your area/neighborhood for that size house, what others are getting and what is offered in those homes at that price. Then do nothing above that unless you want to charge more. Chances are, you won't recoup any premium costs on nicer stuff anyways and in the long run, its a rental for them, so whatever.
Get ready for retards and poors no matter what. Also realize that most people are just completely fucking dirty which is only made worse when its not their own stuff. You also need to kind of ask them random questions to trip them up and see if they're going to be those faggots that somehow think its your job to replace a light-bulb that went out or start threatening to 'withhold rent' or some bullshit whenever something they don't like happens.
You will need to condition them from the get go that you're not nice, but fair and that you aren't going to repeat yourself or put up with any shit, so don't even come here if thats a problem. Being a bit of a dick at first helps.
You need a credit report on everyone 18 and over in the house at an absolute minimum. If they are 18, they need to pay for and get their credit ran - no exceptions. Poors like to burn one person's credit and then use the other for the new stuff because they'll have little to no bad credit whereas the spouse/relative will have a credit score of -6. Also gives you more people to go after on the back end. You shake enough of those poors and something will fall out.
Get actual income verification, not some pay stub. Call and get what you can. Pay stubs can be total and complete bullshit. Also see if there are garnishments or income from child support. Then gauge the calculation of 'can they even afford this' on income that is NOT from shit like child support as that can disappear at any time. It will also give you an idea of how irresponsible with money the child support recipient is if she literally relies on it to pay her current bills instead of it being extra money.
Get a background check and mention to them its required. See what the push-back is - its very telling and sometimes hilarious. Anything on the background that isn't outstanding parking tickets or whatever is enough for me to not want to go further. I don't care what happened. Go somewhere else.
If they keep calling you asking 9889809987908099 questions about the house, they're not fucking worth it and this points to them being total fucking dumb-asses. Move on.
If they tell you they work at/are a property manager or real estate office - someone else has already rented the house, sorry.
Any money due for anything like an application fee (keeps the poors away), background/credit check fee, etc is to 100% of the time be collected in advance, in cash.
Nothing is negotiable with the rent. Ever. Want to negotiate price? Feel free to go outside and talk among yourselves while I close and lock the door.
Put into the contract that payment is made via billpay checks or transfers like Zelle if they have a participating bank. We don't accept checks and if transfers or bill pay checks (which cannot bounce) are an issue, well, there's usually reasons for that. (see: Poors, and you're about ti hear a story of how they dont have a bank account because reasons). Billpay checks have records of when they were input to be paid, when they were issued and have an ID number. There's no room for the bullshit 'it got lost in the mail' excuse because it all has an electronic record at the bank and again, they can't bounce. Feel free to post some retarded late rent fee as well just to see who actually looks at it; usually means this applies to them.
24 hour inspection notice. Use it a few times randomly the first 1-2 months. Will let you see if they were hiding anything like all of a sudden theres 6 people there and 3 dogs when the lease said 2 people and 0 dogs. It will also give you a heads up on how much monitoring they will need as you'll see how dirty they are. The more bullshit you see, with the more unbelievable bullshit story of how they are 'dog sitting' for friends you get, go back more and more often on those 24 hour inspections.
If for whatever reason you get an application in and everything paid, and you get a credit or background check back (or other reasons you just dont want to rent to them) you are under ZERO obligation to tell them why; just tell them it went a different direction. People will want reasons and then they will try and play bullshit 'gotcha' games with you and threaten to call a lawyer or some shit because it has to be because you're racist or whatever. Give them nothing.
I think the best one I had was this guy that was in his mid 50s, showed up in a Mercedes AMG with some 19-20 year old asian chick in tow that was 100% a mail order/90 day fiance thing going on. He was talking about how he was going through an ugly divorce and his wife was just wrecking everything for him, etc. He filled out an app and I ran his credit. Basically 2M+ in collections between credit cards, car payments (including the AMG that was on a repo list he came in), and houses that I guess he/the ex wife just stopped paying on. LOL nope. Then he threw a fit on the phone after I emailed him that his app was denied due to derogatory financial info that ended up with him threatening to come and burn the house down. I then reminded him that I had a background report, filled out app and every bit of info about him infront of me and he just went away.
